Make it easy to spell. Now, people don't do nearly as much "direct domain searching" as they did in the early 2000s, but you should still have a domain that someone could type into their browser bar without having issues.

Make it easy to remember. Whatever niche you're in you will face constantly growing competition. The easier that your domain is to remember, the more traffic you will get. Personally, I use Expedia.com for my travel bookings. I really don't know if they are better than the competitors (there are a LOT of competitors) but for some reason, it is first to mind and memorable to me.

Make it short if possible but focus on clarity first. I say "if possible," because you shouldn't sacrifice clarity for brevity. Yes, having a domain under 10 letters is really cool but not if it doesn't convey the purpose of the blog clearly to the reader. A great example of a long domain that still does well is SmartPassiveIncome.com. Yes, it is wordy BUT it is very easy to remember.

If you have the budget to do it, don't be afraid of purchasing a premium domain name.

Investing a few hundred dollars up to several thousands of dollars could prove to be one of the best decisions you have ever made.

If you need help finding inspiration for blog names, check out leandomainsearch.com. Start with basic words and see what combinations are available.

Oh look, catorganizer.com is available!

As far as choosing your niche goes, check out my article on niche brainstorming for more details on that.

Basically, you just want to make sure that the niche is big enough, not overly saturated, in a topic you're interested in and has people that are willing and able to buy.

2. Decide on Basic Fixed Style Elements and Stick with Them

When analyzing my productivity and where I was spending most of my time, one thing really stuck out to me.

I was spending hours in Canva.com crafting images for my blog posts.

Most of these images were for featured blog images. These are the images that you see as thumbnails and at the top of each post.

I find them to be important BUT I shouldn't have been spending so much of my own time creating them.

Also, you might notice this blog has a lot of different styled elements throughout. When I transitioned to Thrive Themes (more on that next) I started getting fancy with call out boxes, quotes and other customizable elements.

These are great BUT I was making the mistake of not keeping a constant style. This meant two things.

My blog didn't have a uniform look and feel.

I was spending too much time on each element's design.

I am NOT a designer so why should I keep spending my time trying to be?

What I am doing now is much better.

Now, I save templates for elements that I use over and over.

This allows me to easily paste them into my posts and edit the content within them while maintaining a consistent styling.

Thrive Themes is fantastic at this.

This will save you an insane amount of time and make your content look more consistent.

As for featured images, I have three recommendations.

Design Tip #1 Unless you absolutely love creating your own graphics, are good at it and have the time to spend, don't make new custom graphics from scratch each time you write a post.

You could easily find yourself spending more time designing than writing! People read your blog for your words, not the fancy designs.

Ironically, doing them yourself can end up hurting your bounce rates and overall perceived blog quality.

I found that many of the featured images I made over the past two years look much worse in hindsight and are impossible to read when in thumbnail form. .

Design Tip #2 You don't actually need more than stock photos as featured images

I fell in love with text overlays on my featured images.

I spent time messing with typography (font pairings, spacing, line heights etc.) and lacked consistency while wasting time.

You can absolutely use stock photos as featured images and ignore writing the title of the post over the image if you'd like.

Consistency is key here.

Some of my favorite blogs have ridiculously simplistic featured images but they have consistency and serious style.

How to Create a Featured Image Template in Canva

This is free and easy. I pay for a premium plan but you don't have to.

STEP #2 Create a new design and choose "Blog Title"

If your blog requires a larger or smaller featured image, you can adjust the size accordingly. I find the default blog title fits nicely on my Thrive Theme (the one I use is called Performag by the way).

STEP #3 For each new post, change the text and the images

You can do this yourself OR simply hire a professional designer to make one of these for you so you have the best foundation possible.

Make sure that they make it in Canva or something similar so you can easily edit it.

Once you have the template in place, you have little you can mess up.

You can still have that personal feel and add relevant stock images or your own photos but you don't have to start from scratch each time!

This brings me to point 3...

3. Start with the Best WordPress Theme You Can Afford

My goal is to help internet entrepreneurs of all income levels make money online, so I do try and push free options as often as possible to newbies BUT I am done recommending free WordPress themes for two reasons.

Putting some "skin" in the game and dropping some cash for a premium theme that you can use forever is a great investment.

Transitioning into a new theme is messy, inevitable and costly. I don't know many bloggers who started with free themes and never upgraded to something paid. The time and energy they spend getting their new theme transitioned costs them so much more than just getting something good right out of the gate.

Thrive Themes isn't that expensive. As I mentioned earlier, the new theme suite I recommend is called Thrive Themes. It has made my blogging process so much easier, customizable and systematic. It includes a bunch of additional tools as well as just blog themes (lead collecting plugins and more) but the themes alone are worth every bit of the $19/month (paid annually) that it costs.

Digital marketers are spoiled. We don't have the massive costs that entrepreneurs who sell more tangible products do.

4. If It's Not Great, Don't Write It

They were just "ok," but most didn't drive traffic, build my brand or make sales.

Don't just spray and pray. So many bloggers just barf out as much content as they can and hope something sticks.

I highly recommend that you craft each post with purpose and have a repeatable process for choosing topics and crafting the blog posts themselves.

I have outlined this entire process in my free ebook "The Perfect Blog Post." I highly recommend that you grab a copy and read it before you start writing anything!

Get a FREE ﻿copy﻿ of the perfect blog post

Learn How to Make Serious Money Blogging WITHOUT Writing Hundreds of Posts

Ok, that is all, now, get going!

About the author

Nate McCallister

Nate is the founder and main contributor of EntreResource.com. He is a lifestyle entrepreneur who spends his time building businesses and raising his two kids Sawyer and Brooks with his beautiful wife Emily. His main interests include copywriting, economics and piano.